Awakening To Love

A quick word before I get into Awakening to Love: This is a film that features the Free Speech Coalition's commercial in the beginning related to how piracy is hurting the industry. I stand behind this 100%. All of the quality we see in this product is because it is a profitable industry. If that goes away, the quality of our entertainment declines in every way. Don't pirate.

And, hey, the commercial has the amazing Kimberly Kane in it, so that alone makes it worth watching.

OranjeWife picked out Awakening to Love as a flick I might not want to watch. Okay, she apologized to me profusely for the fact that it seems to be aimed at a female audience. Yeah, the cover really does look like a romance novel, but I consider this to be a good thing. If we are to make adult entertainment more mainstream and culturally visible (as well as socially responsible), we need to have a varied, mainstream audience. I applaud New Sensation's efforts to present more romance as well as more balance in the act of sex. This is not a film where we consider it based on what female talent is present. This is the current industry direction, and is visible even here on our website: the cast list has photos of the female talent. That tells you who the primary audience is. Anything that can expand that audience can only be a good thing.

The music at the outset here seems right off a CW teen drama, piano and acoustic guitar, with the requisite vaguely whiny late-teen/early 20's voice behind it. Very slow and subtle here, which is to be expected a bit, considering a lot of the focus in this series is on the foreplay. Again, a different perspective on sex. Our opening scene is dark, too, though not in a thematic sense. Literally, there are seemingly a few candles and a lamp lighting the scene. While I normally rail against poor lighting, this at least isn't the shadowed, grainy kind. Samantha Ryan is at her luscious best here (see, I do it too), and it's a rather predictable stomach shot in the end. Does that make it less of a fetish? I always wondered why that was the most acceptable spot in more couples-oriented flicks.

I love Kimberly Kane as a nurse, by the way. And I liked how they went out of their way to make her look like a real nurse, not like the fetish stereotype. Also, this woman is tremendously underrated for her presence and acting ability. Granted, no one is winning any Oscars here, but still, a decently told story.

So Samantha's husband, after eight months of her in a coma, decides to move on. Of course she wakes up, hence the plot. Another hospital romance develops in the interim, this one with Allie Haze and her partner in recovery from brain injury. So they have a bit of an encounter in the supply closet. Hmm. I don't think I'm going to want to use THAT pillow now. Good scene, and it's a surprisingly roomy closet, as they're able to lay down for most of the scene.

In the end, it's Danny Mountain recovering with Samantha Ryan, and just as a romance novel would have it, they grow closer. It's like they used the Allie Haze situation as an analog, a preview for what was going to happen. Was that to lessen the surprise? Not sure what the idea was, but it does end with a very nice, sensual scene, one that is incredibly well captured. They finish, and then they fall curled up together.

I'm thinking that is what makes a film like this a good couples pick. And guys who are looking for something a bit more hardcore: you can give up watching gratuitous fucking for a bit if it gets your partner involved, no?

Of course, OranjeWife wants to watch S&M and domination porn, so maybe I'm actually the vanilla one in this relationship. An accusation I'll take gladly, and really, who amongst us doesn't like a good story? Or at least a watchable one? Awakening to Love isn't painful by any means, and shows that good filming techniques are still alive and well in the adult world.